Don’t Roll Over, Beethoven

The case for my theory is strong, I believe, and I hope to convince you that music sounds like human movement. If I am correct, then, with the movement‑meaning of music in hand, we will be in a position to create a new generation of “supermusic”: music deliberately designed to be even more aesthetically pleasing, by far, than previous generations of music. Music has historically been “trying” to shape itself like expressive human behaviors, in the sense that that was what was culturally selected for. But individual composers didn’t know what music was trying to be–composers didn’t know that music works best when tapping into our human‑movement auditory mechanisms. Musical works have heretofore tended to be sloppy mimickers of human movement. With music decoded, however, we can tune it perfectly for our mental software, and blow our minds. You’re toast, Beethoven! I’ve unraveled your secrets!

No. Just kidding. I’m afraid that the music research I’m describing to you will do no such thing, even if every last claim I make is true. To see why the magic of Beethoven is not unraveled by my theory, consider photographic art. Some photographs have evocative power; they count as art. Some photographs, however, are just photographs, and not art. What exactly distinguishes the art from the “not” is a genuine mystery, and certainly beyond me. But there is something that is obviously true about art photographs: they are photographs . Although that’s obvious to us, imagine for a moment that four‑dimensional aliens stumble upon a pile of human artifacts, and that in the pile are photographs. Being four‑dimensional creatures, they have poor intuitions about what a three‑dimensional world looks like from a particular viewpoint inside it. Consequently, our human photographs are difficult to distinguish from the many other human artifacts that are flat with stuff printed upon them, such as wallpaper, clothing, and money. If they are to realize that the photographs are, in fact, photographs–two‑dimensional representations of our 3‑D world–they are going to have to discover this.

Luckily for them, one alien scientist who has been snooping around these artifacts has an idea. “What if,” he hypothesizes, “some of the flat pieces of paper with visual marks are photographs? Not of our 4‑D world, but of their human 3‑D world?” In an effort to test this idea, he works out what the signature properties of photographs of 3‑D worlds would be, such as horizons, vanishing points, projective geometry, field of focus, partial occlusion, and so on. Then he searches among the human artifacts for pieces of paper or fabric having these properties. He can now easily conclude that wallpaper, clothing, and money are not photographs. And when he finds some of our human photographs, he’ll be able to establish that they are photographs, and convince his colleagues. This alien’s research would amount to a big step forward for those aliens interested in understanding our world and how we perceive it. A certain class of flat artifacts is meaningful in a way they had not realized, and now they can begin to look at our photographs in this new light, and see our 3‑D world represented in them.

The theory of music I am defending here is akin to the alien’s theory that some of those flat artifacts are views of 3‑D scenes. To us, photographs are obviously of 3‑D scenes; but to the aliens this is not at all obvious. And, similarly, to our auditory system, music quite obviously is about human action; but to our conscious selves this is not in the least obvious (our conscious selves are aliens to music’s deeper meaning).

To see why this book cannot answer what is good music, consider what this alien scientist’s discovery about photographs would not have revealed. Unbeknownst to the alien, some of the photographs are considered by us humans to be genuine instances of art, and the rest of the photographs are simply photographs. This alien’s technique for distinguishing photographs from nonphotographs is no use at all for distinguishing the artful photographs from the mere photographs. Humanity’s greatest pieces of photographic art and the most haphazard kitsch would all be in the same bag, labeled “views of a 3‑D world.” By analogy, the most expressive human movement sounds and the most run‑of‑the‑mill human movement sounds are all treated the same by the ideas I describe in this book; they are all in the same bag, labeled “human movement sounds.” Although it is expressive human movements that probably drive the structure of music, I have enough on my hands just trying to make the beginnings of a case that music sounds like human movement. Just as it is easier for the four‑dimensional alien to provide evidence for photograph‑ness than to provide evidence for artsy‑photograph‑ness, it is much easier for me to provide evidence that music is human‑movement‑ish than to provide evidence that it is expressive‑human‑movement‑ish. Photographic art is views of 3‑D scenes, but views of 3‑D scenes need not be photographic art. Similarly, music is made of the sounds of humans moving, but the sounds of humans moving need not be–and usually are not–music.

Relax, Beethoven–no need to roll over. If the music‑sounds‑like‑movement theory is correct, then it is best viewed as a cipher key for decoding music. It gives our conscious, scientific selves the ability to translate the sounds of music back into the movements of humans (something our own lower‑level auditory areas already know how to do). But knowing how to read the underlying movement meaning of music does not mean one knows how to write music. Just as I can read great literature but cannot create it, a successful music‑is‑movement theory will allow us to read the meaning of music but not to compose it. Creating good music requires knowing which human movements are most expressive, and making music sound like that. But a theory of expressive human movements is far harder to formulate than a theory of human movements generally. All I can hope to muster is a general theory of the sounds of human movements, and so the theory will be, at best, a decoder ring, not a magical composer of great music.

But a decoder ring may nevertheless be a big step forward for composers. Composers have thus far managed to create great music–great auditory stories of human movements, in our theory’s eyes–without explicitly understanding what music means. With a better understanding of the decoder ring, composers can consciously employ it in the creative process. Similarly, the four‑dimensional alien has much better odds of mimicking artistic photography once he has figured out what photographs actually look like. Until then, the alien’s attempts at artistic photography wouldn’t even look like photography. (“Is this photographic art?” the alien asks, holding up a plaid pattern.) The aliens must know what basic visual elements characterize photography before they can take it to the next level, start to guess which arrangements of those elements are superior, and try their own tentacles at art photography. You can’t have expressive photography without photography, and you can’t have expressive human movement sounds without human movement sounds. The theory of music I’m arguing for, then, does not explain what makes great music. But the theory would nevertheless be a big step forward for this. Like the alien’s basic discovery, it will enable us to pose hypotheses about why some music is great–by referring to the expressive movements and behaviors it depicts.

This decoder ring will, then, be helpful to composers, but it cannot substitute for the expressive antennae composers use to create musical art. For choreographers and movie composers, this decoder ring is potentially much more important. Choreographers and movie composers are deeply concerned with the mapping of music to movement (the principal domain of choreography) or from movement to music (the principal domain of movie composers), and so a decoder ring that translates one to the other is a potential holy grail. In reality, though, it’s not as simple as that. A given piece of music probably does not determine particular dance moves (although your auditory system may pick out just one movement)–a good choreographer needs an artistic head to pick the most appropriately expressive movement of the many possible movements consistent with the music. And for any given movie visual, a good film composer will have to use his or her artistic talents to find an appropriately expressive theme for the scene. Any music–movement decoding devices made possible by this book won’t put choreographers or movie composers out of work, but such a decoder may serve as an especially useful tool for these disciplines, providing new, biologically justified constraints on what makes a good music‑movement match.

So, what is great music? I don’t know. My only claim is that it tends to be written in the language of human movement. Music is movement. But it is not the case that movement is music. Just as most stories are not interesting, most possible movement sounds are not pleasing. What good composers know in their bones is which movement sounds are expressive, and which sequences of movement sounds tell an evocative story. But they also know even deeper in their bones which sounds sound like humans moving, and that is what we’ll be discussing next, in the upcoming chapter and in the Encore.

[1] Researchers in this tradition include Alf Gabrielsson, Patrick Shove, Bruno H. Repp, Neil P. McAngus Todd, Henkjan Honing, Jacob Feldman, and Eric F. Clarke (see his Ways of Listening ).